Harold and Maude Revisited
You’ve learned
“Where Do the Children Play?”
on ukulele, & I
sing along
off-key
as Harold.
It’s the first time
I’ve sung
anything
since the accident.
All the nice things in your apartment,
paper lampshade, red sheer curtains, acrylic tulips
smear and smudge.
I may never see properly again,
but I really like what Maude says
about flowers. You
also know “Don’t be Shy”—
the film’s opening, Harold
kicking the stool, skid of pegs on hardwood,
legs afloat.
I wouldn’t
have done it that way. My plan
was less cinematic.
We stumble over the chorus, not because we don’t
know the words. But because
love is better
than a song
is awkward to sing together. We’re closer
in a way
as friends,
you say.
& that seems true & I still I think you’re beautiful.
Why would that change?
It would make sense for us
to end up together
if this were a movie. If I want
to be you,
I could. I couldn’t
have foreseen the visual disturbances, or you
after a year, after all I did &
(worse) didn’t, visiting the ward
many a friend fled from.
You are braver than those men. I recall
sobbing every time we met
for tea or the dinners you bought me.
I told you, as tears plunked the soup
like stones failing to skip, I will never
get used to this.
Wise as Maude, you promised I would
adapt and, well, I don’t
want to die anymore. After
Maude takes the pills, after—
when they are in the ambulance
& Harold tells Maude
I love you
& then he says
I love you
& and you are gently rubbing my shoulder, thinking,
maybe, I am crying because of my near-suicide. I want to tell you
those were the first good tears
I’ve fallen in a year & I don’t
know exactly what made me cry. It’s something I like
about tears,
again—
they’re so unreasonable.
Wanting to Not Want to Die
and the love, whatever it was, an infection.
—Anne Sexton, “Wanting to Die”
I sealed the cracks
in everything,
made inverse-alibis
of my friends,
still it seeped
in & spread,
the infection,
determined to live.
My Last Depression
by which I mean yes,
the previous & yes,
the definitive. I plan
—when/if—
not to have another one
no matter what. I wanted to tell you
in a poem, so you would worry
less. Is this scary? I fell
from poetry. I mean all/this
that’s here, so fleeting
seems to require us. I couldn’t bear
the responsibility.
Everything fell with intent then.
Gravity, my one god. Agency,
a side effect. Leaves leapt
from branches
on mass. A star had it
with the sky.
My first depression
offered suspense. A narrator
for later. In the ER plan-
less, turned away:
a kid with a fake ID.
I worked on the craft.
Method acted till meta-ness dropped
away & now
—the method is the method—
I explain each time
& am admitted. I feel
(like)/I can’t again.
Is this scary? Or boring?
& what’s worse?
I’m anxious.
Perhaps that’s why
poems exist. Attempts
to say a goodbye to all/this
perfectly. Never finished,
only abandoned. Every poem,
about suicide & love
unfulfilled. I’m sorry/I’ve failed
again.
Notes
The title of this book comes from Anne Carson’s poem “New Rule:” “High on the frozen branches I saw a squirrel jump and skid./Is this scary? he seemed to say …”
The structure of “To My Friends Who Did Not Visit Me in the Mental Hospital” is loosely based upon that of Jane Kenyon’s poem “Having It Out with Melancholy.”
“Forgiveness/is where love and justice finally meet/says Roy Cohn’s nurse” in “To My Friends Who Did Not Visit Me in the Mental Hospital” refers to lines in Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America; after the historically notorious Roy Cohn dies, his nurse, Belize, says: “It isn’t easy, it doesn’t count if it’s easy, it’s the hardest thing. Forgiveness. Which is maybe where love and justice finally meet.”
The line, “I had kept my appointment,” from Stanley Kunitz’s poem “The Testing-Tree” is altered and repurposed, in different ways, in “On Missing a Train Stop” and “Ode to Remicade.”
The translation (which I have taken some modest liberties with) and transliteration of the Yiddish curses in “And Then Job Answered God from inside the Whirlwind They Were Both Caught inside Of” are from Michael Wex’s Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods.
In “My Last Depression” the italicized lines “all/this that’s here, so fleeting/seems to require us” are from Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Ninth Elegy” in the Duino Elegies (trans. J.B. Leishman), though I have altered the line breaks and added the slash (i.e. “all/this”). The lines “Never finished,/only abandoned” refers to the often cited Paul Valéry dictum as paraphrased by W.H. Auden: “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.”
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council for their generous financial support in the writing of this book.
Thank you to Michael Holmes for the clarity and insight he brought (as always) to editing my poems. Thank you to Jack David and David Caron for continuing to give my poetry a good home. Thank you to Emily Schultz for her incredibly sharp copyedit. Thank you, as well, to Jessica Albert for the beautiful cover design. And thank you to everyone at ECW Press who put time and energy into making this book: Emily Ferko, Susannah Ames, Elham Ali, Caroline Suzuki, and Shannon Parr.
Versions of some of these poems have appeared in the Walrus, Vallum, the Humber Literary Review, Poetry is Dead, Juniper, Pamenar Press Online Magazine, and the League of Canadian Poets Website: “Poetry and Healing” project: Thank you to the editors of these publications.
“Jumbo Elegy” was nominated for a National Magazine Award and “To My Friends Who Did Not Visit Me in the Mental Hospital” was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize.
Thank you to the friends and colleagues who gave me such helpful feedback on early drafts of some of the poems in this book: Rocco de Giacomo, Kate Gies, Lisa Richter, and Heather Wood.
Thank you to the mentors at the Banff Centre for the Arts Writing Studio pro
gram: Michael Dickman, Lisa Robertson, and Karen Solie, for their constructive criticism on earlier drafts of these poems.
Thank you to Chris Matthews and Julia Viskov.
And thank you to all the friends and mental health professionals who have supported me in times of severe depression.
About the Author
Jacob Scheier is a Toronto-based poet, essayist, and journalist. He is the author of two previous poetry collections, including the Governor General’s Award–winning More to Keep Us Warm (ECW, 2007). His poems, articles, and essays have appeared in journals, magazines, and anthologies across North America.
Copyright
Copyright © Jacob Scheier, 2021
Published by ECW Press
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Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4M 1Y2
416-694-3348 / [email protected]
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Editor for the Press: Michael Holmes/a misFit Book
Cover design: Rachel Ironstone
Author photo: Julia Viskov
library and archives canada cataloguing in publication
Title: Is this scary? : poems / Jacob Scheier.
Names: Scheier, Jacob, author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200383159 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200383280
ISBN 978-1-77041-605-5 (Softcover)
ISBN 978-1-77305-720-0 (ePub)
ISBN 978-1-77305-721-7 (PDF)
ISBN 978-1-77305-722-4 (Kindle)
Classification: LCC PS8637.C432 I8 2021 | DDC C811/.6—dc23
The publication of Is This Scary? has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and is funded in part by the Government of Canada We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. Ce livre est financé en partie par le gouvernement du Canada. We acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,965 individual artists and 1,152 organizations in 197 communities across Ontario for a total of $51.9 million. This book is funded in part by the Government of Canada. Ce livre est financé en partie par le gouvernement du Canada. We acknowledge the support of the Government of Ontario through Ontario Creates.
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